


Noisy-le-Sec

by ElDiablito_SF



Series: Snippets in Time [14]
Category: Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Genre: Blasphemy, M/M, Monastery sex, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-01
Updated: 2010-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:12:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aramis is located.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [speakmefair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/gifts).



> Given the intricacies that scientists will never figure out of time/space and Dumas, I am compelled to specify when I intend this to take place.According to _The Three Musketeers_ , Athos served in the musketeers until 1633.According to _Twenty Years After_ , that is approximately the time Raoul was conceived (October 11, 1633, to be exact).If we treat these indications as Gospel Truths (and I do), then Athos served until 1633, conceived Raoul, and it is after this time, but before Raoul is born, that this story takes place.Such details are important to me, in case I choose to continue this line of entertainment in the future.

 

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/eldiablito_sf/pic/00002bfc/)

_A Jesuit Novitiate, France, 1630’s_

 

**Noisy-le-Sec**

 

It wasn’t so much that the search had itself become an obsession to him, or so he had maintained when he finally arrived in the township of Noisy-le-Sec.  It was just something to do, in the beginning.  It was something to keep him from drinking (because, after all, you couldn’t really be drunk and put that many leagues away on horseback, no matter what kind of metal you were made of), or, possibly, something to keep him from doing other things that would be monumentally even more stupid.  He never once stopped to think what he would do if one day, after all the searching, the riding, the nights spent in strange places, and some with even stranger people, he might actually _find_ the man he’d been searching for.  It never occurred to him, because, as much as he may have wanted to delude himself, he knew that the man he was seeking was not, in reality, lost.  He had not disappeared off the face of the planet by some sudden chance of circumstance, nor dragged to the far corners of the earth by forces beyond his control.  No, he had left by his own volition.  He _was_ the magician behind his own disappearing act.  And he had done so completely willingly and without the slightest desire to be sought out.

So, when he found himself, at last, sitting in the back of the chapel during Mass, devouring the abbé with his eyes, blessedly obscured by shade and other parishioners, he felt completely paralyzed for the first time in all those desperate years by something very akin to self-doubt.

The man at the pulpit was delivering a sermon that, it would have been obvious to any observer with half a mind to glean beneath the surface, was entirely lacking in conviction.  Every few minutes, the abbé’s eyes would pause, as if tripping and falling, caught on the face of one young woman or another seated in one of the front rows.  He would then seem to lose his train of thought, cover for it with some vaguely dismissive, mechanical gestures, and pick up his sermon with even less enthusiasm than before.  However, aside from the man hungrily eyeing him from the back of the chapel, the other parishioners, most of whom were female constituents, did not seem to notice these small guffaws at all, and continued to lean inadvertently closer in the direction of the pulpit, lightly swaying with what was most likely something quite different than religious fervor.

He left without taking communion.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

René d’Herblay felt restless and annoyed, mostly with himself for behaving like some kind of a pathetic schoolboy.  He knew from the very beginning that his mind wasn’t in the right place for delivering the sermon, but his apparent inability to even keep up a semblance of detached loftiness requisite in his position made him blush to the very roots of his hair and curse himself.

When it was finally over, he decided he needed to go for a ride to clear his head and forget the humiliation he felt when, after all this time, he knew he still could not control his basest desires, even in the house of the Lord.  “Why did I ever leave the musketeers?” he queried himself for the thousandth time.  “Things were so much simpler then.  You saw something you desired and you took it; someone offended you and you killed them and went along with your day.”  Yes, back then, when he was still Aramis, he took and he killed and he destroyed everything.  And now he couldn’t remember why.  It must have stemmed from some kind of a deeply rooted need to punish himself, he allowed on rare occasions.  But mostly, he preferred not to think about those days anymore.  As much as he could.

He usually stabled his horse outside of the convent, for a variety of practical reasons, including being able to get to the horse at any time of night, should such a need arise.  Sometimes, it did.  There was a small local tavern that allowed him the convenience of leaving and retrieving his horse with no questions asked and for a very reasonable price.  The Abbé d’Herblay entered the stable, still wearing his cassock, as he was apparently not cognizant enough that day to change out of it, and he cursed himself again for apparently leaving his head irretrievably up his own rectum.  However, inappropriate riding attire aside, he still wanted to take the horse out and so he approached his mare who neighed in friendly recognition.    

At the sound made by the horse, there was movement on the other side of the stable, as if another person had been startled, and the abbé glanced over to see in whose company he had unexpectedly found himself.  It was another rider, adjusting the bridles of his own stallion, evidently about to mount him.   Unlike the abbé, this man was outfitted entirely for the road:  his riding boots unrolled all the way up to his mid-thigh, hands encased in fine calf-skin gloves, wrapped in a cloak and with his hat pulled tightly over his eyes.  Something about seeing this figure thusly clad once again reminded the abbé of something from his past that filled him with melancholy longing and inability to avert his eyes from the stranger.  Even though the man’s back was to him, he could not help but feel there was a familiarity in that stance, or even the curve of the stranger’s back, obscured though it was by the cloak. 

Feeling eyes on him, the unknown rider tensed, and pulled his horse’s muzzle very close to his face, as if planning on holding secret counsel with his equine friend.  He stroked the horse’s mane with one hand, while the other furtively traveled to the hilt of his sword.

“You need not draw, Monsieur.  I meant you no harm.”

At hearing these words spoken, the stranger let go of the sword and spun around to face the abbé, whose turn it was now to gasp and take a step back.

“Athos!”

Athos, for it was indubitably him, remained standing in silence, his eyes like two dark pools of confused emotion, looking as if they were about to overflow.

“René,” he finally spoke, in a voice so chilling that it sent shivers up the other man’s spine.

“No,” the abbé protested, and took a step forward.  “Don’t call me that,” and he advanced another step closer.

“Aramis?” the other man said in a way that sounded more like a question than a statement.

“Always,” the latter replied and, tentatively coming up to his old comrade, he wrapped his arms around him and pulled him into a bone-crushing embrace.  Athos brought his arms up, hesitantly, and finally wrapped them around his old lover and pressed his face into the part of Aramis’s skin where his neck met the collarbone.  He inhaled deeply, the scent at once familiar and new, and his head had commenced to spin. Athos could feel hands roaming up his back, underneath his cloak, as if exploring to see what’s changed in the terrain.  The body he felt pressed to him was still muscular and tightly wound, as if the passage of time and the change in lifestyle did nothing at all to efface the grace and beauty that was once known as Aramis.  And, suddenly, there they were:  lips on his lips, and it all became much more than he could handle.

“I was leaving!” he snapped, tearing his mouth away. 

Aramis’s eyes suddenly got very large and, much to Athos’s consternation, he sank down to his knees, wrapped his arms around his friend’s riding boots and let out, “Please, forgive me!”

  
Your experience has just been EMBETTERED by this art created by the glorious [](http://speak-me-fair.livejournal.com/profile)[**speak_me_fair**](http://speak-me-fair.livejournal.com/)  herself!

 


	2. Chapter 2

He was going to leave.  He had gone back to the tavern, ordered a bottle of wine, and drank it slowly and methodically, the way he may have done back in the day when he was still a soldier.  It pained to admit this to himself, but it had felt the same, seeing Aramis, even from afar, up on that pulpit, spouting all sorts of religious nonsense that Athos still could not imagine Aramis genuinely believed.  And yet, he was the one who should have had more proof of this belief than anyone else. 

He was the one who, waking up in their bed one morning, after a particularly emotional night of passion (which should have been a clue at the time), found himself suddenly alone.  Dawn was barely breaking when he awoke, which meant that Aramis must have left in the middle of the night.  His scent still lingering on one of the pillows, Aramis had left only a note that said:

 

_My love, please forgive me.  A._

Just like that, he was gone.  It was much later, and through means not entirely pleasant to Athos, did they all learn that he had joined a Jesuit convent.  Somewhere out there.  Away from him.

And now that he had found him, he was going to just turn around and walk away.  It would be easy, he told himself.  Just like that.   _Perdition._   Walk away.  It was enough to see him, and to know that this was where he was, but he wouldn’t give Aramis the satisfaction of knowing the pain he’d caused him.   _No_ , he would leave.

So, why was he still standing there, his lips on fire, all of his muscles trembling, with this man who had torn his heart out, now on his knees before him and saying those two terrible words that kept resounding through all of his nightmares?

“Forgive me,” Aramis had repeated.

But Athos was speechless and, apparently, also petrified. 

Seeing his old friend overcome with muteness, Aramis at last got back to his feet and asked, “Where are you lodged?”

“I am not,” Athos responded, finally finding his voice.  “I was leaving,” he repeated, possibly more to himself than to his companion.

“That is not ideal,” Aramis said somewhat pensively, and adding,  “Follow me,” he turned and walked out of the stable with the assurance of a man whose wishes would be obeyed.

Athos, with a great degree of difficulty, tried to shake off the stupor that had overcome him.  A voice inside his head was telling him to get back on his horse and ride like the wind.  But he knew that it would not be that silly voice  _of reason_  that he would end up listening to.  At last, he commanded his feet to move, and followed Aramis out of the stable.  He noted with trepidation that his friend was walking back towards the convent, and he walked on behind him in disbelief. 

As they were crossing the sacristy, Aramis turned around and whispered, “Remind me to have Bazin look into some kind of a ladder that I can use from my window.”  Athos wanted to make some statement of awe at the fact that such a thing would need a reminder, but instead he spat out “That imbecile still works for you?!” with such an air of disgust that Aramis could not help but laugh.  This interlude seemed to bring a much-needed respite to the mind of Athos, which was being torn in every direction since locking eyes with Aramis in the stable.  He looked around at the sacred vessels and vestments surrounding them in the small space, and backing up a few steps to the doorway through which they had entered, he shut the door.

“Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't do it here,” Aramis admonished, moving in the direction of the winding staircase towards which he was originally headed.  But before he could set a foot onto the first step, he was spun around by his shoulder, and a gloved fist made acquaintance with his face, knocking him back against the wall.  The disorientation resulting from very nearly having lost consciousness, had a peculiar effect on Aramis, who looked up from the floor, where he had landed, his eyes filled with both surprise and horror, as he said through a grotesque smile, “Not the  _face_!”

The man standing over him emitted a soft chuckle, but remained looking at him, impassively, his fists still clenched.

“Oh yes, Aramis, most certainly the  _face_ ,” he finally said, nodding definitively.  Then Athos leaned over, wrapping each hand around Aramis's collar, and dragged him back up to his feet, but evidently only to throw him across the room, knocking over all of the sacramental vestments.  Aramis rolled over and managed to intercept Athos's fist with his hand before it had the opportunity to make new impact with his head.

“Stop!  Don't do this here!”

“I would think  _here_  is the perfect place to do this,” Athos hissed through clenched teeth, but lowering his fist.

“You can continue beating me upstairs, if that is your wish,” Aramis whispered, tasting blood in his mouth from where the original punch had landed.

Athos roughly pulled the other man up again and pushed him towards the staircase.  “Suit yourself,” he added.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At last, they had reached Aramis’s room, or rather, the residence of the Abbé d’Herblay, as Athos was still not convinced which one he had to deal with on this occasion, but at that moment he felt he had despised both equally.  Regardless of what he called him, the resident of the rooms immediately dead-bolted the door.  Casting a quick look around the place, Athos noted nothing noteworthy that might indicate a priestly residence, with the exception of an all too familiar crucifix, desolately hung in a remote corner of the room.  Looking at it caused Athos physical pain at some of his particularly prurient recollections and he felt a surging of rage in the pit of his stomach again.

“I prayed that you would find me,” Aramis’s voice brought Athos out of his reverie.

“That seems a rather foolish sentiment, under the circumstances,” Athos offered, mechanically flexing the fingers on his punching hand.  “And when you say such things, it only makes me want to go on hitting you.”

“You do not understand the complete and utter misery that has been my life since I left you,” Aramis continued, wiping the blood away from his mouth.

“Again, foolish, considering you just pointed out that it was  _you_ who had left  _me_.” 

“I remember who did the leaving!” Aramis snapped.  “But it changes nothing.  I never repented of being with you.”

“You do realize how insane that sounds,” Athos said, advancing towards the other man, still looking coiled and about to strike.   “Given we’re having this conversation in a convent?  To which you belong?”

“I still belong only to you,” Aramis breathed out, taking a step forward and brazenly undoing his collar.

“You belong to God,” Athos corrected, with as much sangfroid as he could muster.

“Let’s see what God has to say about  _this_ ,” Aramis countered, pulling Athos into his embrace again, and filling the mouth of Athos with the metallic taste of his blood.

He wanted to resist, knew it would be the right thing to do, but then again, when had he ever done the right thing by Aramis?  The taste of the blood coming from Aramis's lips only made Athos want to crush the man underneath him, to continue punching him, until he made Aramis look on the outside the way he had made him feel on the inside.  And yet, he felt his kiss become far less ferocious than he wanted it to be and he cursed himself that after so long and so much pain this could still feel so perfectly right.  They tumbled into the bed together, an entanglement of limbs and tongues.  There was too much cloth and too little air and Athos felt searing pain all through his joints.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to take this damn thing off you!” he hissed through gritted teeth.

“You know, your cloak is not really helping things along either!”

“Damn you!”  Athos finally tore the cloak off himself, demonstratively.  “Damn you and your pragmatism!”  In the meantime, Aramis was extricating himself from his excruciatingly long cassock, which was proving to be even more unwieldy than usual.  Finally, there was a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed, and the two men looked at each other as if across an ocean.

“Please,” Aramis said softly.

“You’re still so beautiful,” Athos mumbled with a sense of wonderment.

“Please,” Aramis repeated.  “I want you inside me.”

“And I want to kill you,” Athos responded, in the same tone of voice that he would have used before to tell Aramis that he loved him.  And, perhaps, it was only the tone of voice and not the actual words that Aramis heard, because he had reached out and pulled the other man on top of himself.   Athos straddled the man beneath him and grabbed him by the hair exposing his favorite, tender part of his throat.

“You want my forgiveness?” he hissed again, partly convinced that he was going to rip the man’s throat out with his bare teeth.

“Yes,” the other man moaned beneath him, not resisting the onslaught of violence that seemed imminent.

“Well, you don’t  _get_  it!” Athos snapped, pulling harder on the other man’s hair.  Keenly aware that he was losing the battle with his own body, he ground his entire weight into the core of the man he held trapped underneath him, and whispered hotly into Aramis’s ear, “I just want you to know that while my cock might forgive you, the rest of me most definitely does not!”  With that, Athos attacked the other man’s mouth with feral zeal, which Aramis welcomed, victoriously.

They both felt consumed by a fire that burned them up all too quickly, reducing them to an incomprehensible pile of moans, sweat and flesh.  For a few moments, Athos felt like perhaps he had immolated his pain and hatred on the altar of Aramis’s body because a kind of stillness had come over him the like of which he had not felt in years. Lying draped over him, his face tucked once again into the familiar nook of his lover’s neck, Athos felt like he was floating.  Long, delicate, beloved fingers were entangled in his hair, and softly massaging the back of his skull.  So when he heard Aramis speak those horrible words again, “Please… Oh God… please, please forgive me,” he could no longer control himself, and he wept.

A soft hand gently descended down to his face, to both cradle it and wipe the tears away from his eyes.

“You’re burning up.  I think you have a fever,” Athos heard, but did not care anymore whether this was, in fact, the case.  The searing pain from before had moved from his joints and had by now taken over his entire body.  Then the chills had set in and he started to shake.  The ultimate thing he remembered clearly was Aramis’s worried face floating above him like a Botticelli angel and, with the last vestiges of his strength, whispering to this angel, “Don’t… leave me.”


	3. Chapter 3

When he had come to, after what felt like several days of restless sleep, the first thing he did, instinctively, was cast his eyes towards the corner of the wall where earlier on he remembered glimpsing the crucifix.  Its old, wooden presence seemed to reassure him, but he was not quite certain of what.

“Your fever broke last night, _ergo_ I think you will live,” he heard from somewhere nearby.  “It would have been somewhat embarrassing sending for a confessor, so it’s a lucky thing I took my orders after all.  You know, just in case.”

“Oh, how amused I am by you,” Athos groaned and tried to sit up in the (surprisingly much more gigantic than how he remembered it) bed.

“It’s about time you were awake,” Aramis continued, coming closer and sitting down next to his friend.  “I was starting to worry I would completely rot up here while taking care of you.”

“Is that why you left?  Because you didn’t want to spend the rest of your life taking care of me?”

A shadow passed over Aramis’s face, but he seemed to force whatever was at the tip of his tongue down and settled for saying, “Good.  I see you’re feeling like yourself again.”  Athos gave him a measured look, also taking in the fact that his lip looked much healed compared to how he last remembered leaving it, but did not offer anything else by way of speaking.  “I have to admit though,” Aramis went on, getting up and readjusting his attire, “that there is something oddly comforting in taking care of you when you’re all… vulnerable… and near death.”

“Yes, well, I seem to recall such scenarios in the past have always led to incredibly good… uh...,” Athos paused and took in the sight of Aramis readjusting a rather sizable cross in the middle of his chest.  “Um… sinning,” he finished.

“Bah,” Aramis said, and in a fashion that seemed particularly shocking to Athos at that instant, winked at him.  “It was just making love.”

“You fill me with utter dread,” the former musketeer admitted and sank back into the bed, the enormity of which still had not stopped daunting him.

“I have to go take care of something… rather priestly.  Don’t leave while I’m gone, would you?”

“I would not have the faintest idea how to find my way out,” Athos mumbled from the pillows while suppressing a yawn.  In response, Aramis simply pointed to the window, at the base of which, Athos could see out of the corner of his eye, there now appeared to be a rope ladder, lying on the ground, coiled up around itself.

“Have I mentioned the dread with which you fill me?” Athos called out, as Aramis shushed him and quietly left the room.

  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The next time Athos found himself awakening, the first thing he was aware of was that he had been bodily wrapped up in something that his mind could best identify as “naked man.”  He opened his left eye, somewhat cautiously, not wanting to move his head and let on that he was wake, and had received visual proof that he was, in fact, completely covered by Aramis’s naked form.  From that state of things, Athos inferred he must have been asleep for quite some time again.

“Is this still part of my treatment?” he finally whispered in his friend’s ear, so conveniently located near his lips.

“Eastern sages teach us that heat is the best therapy for chronic pain.” 

“My kind of chronic pain cannot be treated with a little heat,” Athos sighed.

“That’s why it’s fortunate that my body produces quite a bit more than a _little_ heat.”

“Aramis,” Athos began, trying to shift his body, but he was immediately prevented from further elocution by his friend’s mouth closing over his own.

“I wish I could keep you here forever, just like this,” Aramis said with a wicked grin, in between kissing and nibbling on Athos’s lower lip.

“Then why did you leave?”

“Give me more time before we have that discussion,” Aramis frowned, kissing the man imprisoned underneath him with more insistence.

“I think we’ve had enough time,” Athos sighed, a battle being waged between his mind and his body, with the body having only a slight advantage this time.  Aramis wantonly licked his neck and invaded his mouth again.

“You still taste like Heaven,” Aramis said with the same ravenous look Athos was used to receiving from him back when they were both musketeers.

“We _were_ Heaven,” the older man responded.

Those words seemed to break through the veil that Aramis was trying so hard to draw over his expression.  It looked as if something broke in his face, and he fixed both eyes doggedly in the hollow of Athos’s neck, fighting back what Athos would have assumed to be tears, had he ever known Aramis to be capable of crying.

“The only Heaven I’ve ever found, in fact,” Aramis conceded in a choked up voice, sliding his body off his prisoner and turning over onto his back to lie next to him.  Athos reached out and took the other man’s hand in his and brought it to his lips.

“You broke my heart,” he said, simply.

“As you always knew I would.”

“It didn’t make it hurt any less, the foreknowledge.”

“Did my departure send you right into his arms, as I feared it would?” Aramis suddenly inquired.

“Not at first,” Athos responded with a tinge of something quite merciless in his voice.  “And, even then, not for long.”

“How long did you wait?” Aramis asked, becoming acutely aware that their conversation was becoming a duel.

“I waited until about the time that word trickled down from one or the other of the many lovers of your Whore of Tours that you had taken holy orders.”

“Ah,” was somehow the only thing Aramis found himself saying.

“Rumor had it at the time that it was the convent at Nancy.”

“Yes, well, I did not last there long.”

“That’s what I found out when I started looking for you there.”

“So you _were_ looking for me?” Aramis asked, triumphantly.

“After I had left the service,” Athos confirmed.

“When was that, if I may?”

“Last year.”

“You served under him for some time then,” bitterness and jealousy seeped through in this question as he lifted himself onto his elbow and eyed his companion with measured provocation.

“Not _under_ him,” Athos responded, throwing Aramis his own challenging look.  Thrust and parry, he thought to himself, as per usual.

“That is of little consolation to me,” Aramis declared, backing down.

“What did you expect me to do, Aramis?  Lie down and die?” Athos sat up and placed his throbbing head into the palms of his hands.  “I think I almost did,” he admitted, in much quieter voice.  “In either case, I have not seen him since I left the service and, given how things left off, I’m not sure that he’ll be seeking _me_ out any time soon.”

“I moved to this convent to be closer to Paris,” Aramis said, still struggling with his emotions, not quite knowing what to do with his hands.  “But you had already departed for Blois.”

“You knew where I was?” Athos turned to him, incredulously.

“I made my own inquiries.”

“A convenient piece of inheritance,” Athos sighed.

“The château Bragelonne,” Aramis nodded, absentmindedly.  “I was wondering if you’d actually return to La Fère.”

“To die, maybe,” Athos smirked.  Aramis reached out and put his hand on Athos’s back, between his shoulder blades, feeling the muscles there tense up underneath his fingers.

“Will you never forgive me?”

“ _WHY DID YOU LEAVE_?”  Athos shouted, at last, no longer able to ignore the burning question consuming him.  “How do you expect me to forgive something that I do not understand?”  Aramis drew back a bit, as if fearing another physical outburst from his companion, but said nothing.  “Can you tell me _why_?  I did nothing wrong but love you. And I know you loved me too.  What did I _do_ to drive you away?”

Aramis tried to reach out to touch his friend again, but his hands were slapped away.

“No!  You can’t make this right by touching me!  Answer me, damn you!”

“It had nothing to do with you,” Aramis began, averting his eyes, and speaking very quickly.  “Please, don’t tell me you thought that whole time that it was ever your fault!  My choice was made long before I ever met you.  It was because of _you_ that I stayed a musketeer for as long as I had.  But my leaving had nothing to do with you!  I may have been very young then, but I had made a promise to God, and I always intended to keep that promise.”

“What about the promises you made to me?” Athos asked, pleadingly.

“I never lied to you.  I never told you I would stay forever.  You _knew_.”

“You really believe that you did the right thing, don’t you?” Athos asked, some kind of a strange understanding dawning on him.

“I knew that I did wrong by you, but I also knew that if I had told you I intended to return to the fold of the Church that you would try to stop me.  Nay, that you _would_ stop me!”

Athos could take this conversation no more.  Turning away again, he shut his eyes and dropped his head upon his chest.  Aramis’s eyes followed him still from the other end of the bed.  The desire to reach out and to hold him, to touch with his lips, to caress that wild mane of tumbling black hair, was rising up strongly again, but Aramis fought it back.   He would not want his actions to be misinterpreted as pity.

“For what it’s worth,” Aramis whispered, “I _am_ sorry.  What do I have to do to make you forgive me?”

“It’s quite beautiful there, you know, at Bragelonne” Athos said, not turning around, his mind not recognizing the question posed to him.  “There are these… old… chestnut trees.”

“Athos,” giving in to his need for physical contact, Aramis wrapped his arms around his friend and rested his head against the back of his shoulder.

“No one would have to know anything about me there, nor anyone else who was there with me,” Athos continued.  “In the country side, people are very good at pretending to mind their own business.”

“Athos, what are you talking about?”  
  
“I’m talking about you coming away with me.”  Athos turned around to face his friend.  “Come with me to Bragelonne.”

“You’re serious?” Aramis asked, widening his eyes in wonderment.

“Yes, I’m serious!”

“What would I do there?” Aramis inquired, before he could stop himself, because as soon as these words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back.  Athos’s face clouded over and became an impassive mask again. 

“Well, that answers my questions, I suppose.”

“No, you don’t understand.  Athos, I love you!  My life is quite literally unbearable without you!”

“You seem to bear it quite well enough.”

“It’s just that… I am what I am!  And in Bragelonne, I will be nothing.  What will I be there?”

“Well, I don’t know, Aramis.  My lover?  My friend?  My everything?”

“That’s not how others would see it.  I would be your kept woman… well, without the woman part.”

“I would hope that the sanctity of the Church would have put the Abbé d’Herblay far beyond the reach of such accusations,” Athos offered with a small laugh.

“Athos, as ridiculous as you find it, this is my _job_.”

“Nay, it is your _vocation_.”

“Whatever you call it, this is the path I am on now.  And you want me to give it all up?  My career and, for all intents and purposes, my living?”

“I apologize,” Athos said with feigned supplication.  “I was misled by your protestations that you _loved_ me.”

“I do,” Aramis maintained, yet feeling this bout slipping away from him.  “I love you more than I love anyone else in the world.  But…”  
  
“Not enough,” Athos helpfully finished the thought for him.

“There is nothing for me in Blois,” Aramis concluded, resigned.

“Well then,” Athos said, climbing out of the bed and walking over to the armchair upon which he could see his riding clothes.  “If and when the fancy strikes you, you can always find _me_ there.”

“Please, don’t leave like this,” Aramis begged, despite the pangs of pride still tormenting him.

“Oh, do not worry yourself, my love.  I shall leave through the window.”

“I can’t let you go like this!”

“I feel quite well enough now,” Athos proceeded while putting his clothes back on.  “Thank you for taking care of me in my feverish state, by the way.”

“Please, don’t torment me with your hatred,” Aramis found that he could say absolutely nothing that would make this situation better.

“Hatred?” Athos veered on him.  “No, Aramis, that is decidedly _not_ what I feel for you!”

“Then stay!  At least a while longer.”

“What is the point?  I can guarantee you, from personal experience, that if I leave you later after more of the same, it will not, in fact, lessen the pain of my departure.”  Athos resumed outfitting himself.  “If you don’t love me enough to leave with me, at least love me enough to let me leave you while I still have the strength to do so,” he added, speaking practically into his doublet.

“I ache and burn without you,” Aramis uttered in a state of such despondency that Athos barely recognized him at that moment.

“Well, apparently, you know where to find me,” Athos said, evenly, strapping his sword back onto his belt and wrapping his cloak around himself.  Then, as if feeling torn between dark humor and exasperation, he added, “It’s difficult to make a grandiose exit by use of a rope ladder and through a window.”

“If you whistle, Bazin will bring your horse to the window and you can jump into the saddle,” Aramis suggested, sitting back down on the bed in his most defeated of postures.

“That would be a markedly more dramatic way to leave,” said Athos, opening the window and whistling.  To his surprise, a few minutes later, a man appeared from the trees, holding what was definitely his own horse by the bridle.   “I take it all back.  The imbecile has his uses.”

“Thank you,” Aramis responded in a hollow voice.

“Good-bye, Aramis.” 

Athos paused by the window and looked back, as if wanting to say something else.  Their eyes met, and, possibly this was enough for Athos, because he decided against speaking, and, mounting the windowpane, he leapt out and onto his horse’s saddle.

 

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It was clear after the first few hours in the saddle that he should probably, in fact, not be in the saddle at all.  He wasn’t sure whether he had eaten anything during the entire time that he was laid up at the convent, but luckily, or possibly due to no luck at all, his canteen had been refilled with water, so at least he knew he would not be dying of thirst on the road.  He took a long swallow, dug his heels deeper into his stirrups and clung to the mane of his horse as if it was his last thread to life.  At least, he thought, the physical pain was keeping him from feeling the other pain that he would surely feel again when he had more time to process everything that had occurred.  It would be dawn soon, and then he’d be able to get his bearings, and possibly (his mind salivated at the thought of it) he would find some place to sleep again.  He just had to stay in the saddle until such time.

By dawn’s break, his horse, perceptive to his rider’s needs, had slowed down to a leisurely walk, and Athos was at a point of contemplating just going to sleep in the middle of the road.   Suddenly, the sound of horses snapped Athos’s attention back to the present situation and out of his physical misery.  The banging of the multiple hooves against the ground sounded like a carriage approaching, and Athos pulled his horse out of the way to allow them to pass.  A carriage, drawn by a team of magnificent stallions, did materialize out of the dust, but instead of passing our weary rider, the coachman brought the horses to a halt when they were alongside Athos.  Realizing he was in no condition to be attacked or abducted, Athos nonetheless veered his horse towards the windows of the carriage, but tightened the reigns when noticing the Jesuit crest on the side of the door.

The gate of the carriage swung open and a cool voice echoed from within, making Athos question whether he was, in fact, dreaming.

“Get in,” the voice commanded.

“What the…?”

“Get in,” the voice repeated, with more insistence.  “You know you should not be riding in your condition, you fool.”

Athos dismounted and approached the carriage, still questioning his sanity and wakefulness.  A look into the carriage revealed, to Athos’s greatest confusion, the Abbé d’Herblay, attired entirely like Aramis, in his finest riding clothes and armed to the teeth.

“Will you get in, you idiot?” the apparition demanded again.

“Are you going to abduct me and force me to join your order?” Athos asked, cocking one of his eyebrows, suspiciously.

“This carriage will take us as far as Saint-Arnoult.  We’ll travel by post from there.”

“Where… are we going?” Athos inquired, just as bewildered as before, yet obediently situating himself into the carriage.

“To Blois, of course,” Aramis responded with a shrug of his shoulders, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.  “Bazin will follow later and bring your horse.”

“Aramis, you don’t have to…” but Athos was interrupted by his friend’s hand over his mouth.

“I _do_ have to.  Because I meant what I said earlier about belonging only to you.  And I prefer your forgiveness to God’s forgiveness.  And it lies in Blois, and that is where we’re going.”  He lifted his hand and allowed Athos the opportunity to speak again.  “Now, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Athos shook his head, a bit dumbfounded.

“You stole my crucifix,” Aramis explained, giving Athos a small wag of the finger.  “Why?”

“I was jealous of your other lover.”

“You never change.  Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“Thank you for saving me again?”

“I do what I can,” Aramis said dismissively, yet his face shone forth with a smile as beautiful as anything Athos recalled from a time when they needed no words and there was nothing yet to forgive each other for.

  
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